Biggest Public Sector Strike In South Africa’s History

South African Workers demonstrateTHE
FRONT page headline of This Day read "Total Shutdown" as
schools throughout the country were deserted. All the teaching unions
joined with the South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu – the 1.8
million strong Congress of South African Trade Union’s biggest public
sector affiliate), to take mass action in their second "chalks
down" in as many weeks.

Weizmann Hamilton, (Democratic Socialist Movement, CWI, South Africa)

Marches were organised in over 20 towns and cities throughout the
country as the majority of the 800,000 unionised government employees
struck in a show of unprecedented non-racial workers’ unity in South
Africa’s biggest public sector strike in history.

Reports from all the marches reported a burning anger directed
particularly towards the Public Service and Administration minister
Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, because of her arrogant negotiating style and
derisory 6% wage offer. She has become the target of struggle songs
previously directed against the apartheid regime.

At the Union Buildings rally in Pretoria she was howled down and
workers booed as she shouted the traditional struggle slogan
"amandla!" (power) and left in tears after plastic missiles and
other objects were hurled at the podium.

Class divisions

SADTU’S 100,000-strong 2 September national strike provided the spark
that lit the veld-fire of government employees’ anger raging across the
country. The ingredients for the strike had been prepared on the one hand
by the acrimonious climate in the six months of failed negotiations, and
on the other by sharpening class antagonisms within society.

The negotiations had been taking place in a cauldron of discontent
simmering since the government’s unilateral implementation of its wage
offer in 1999 after Fraser-Moleketi had walked out of the Public Service
Co-ordinating Bargaining Council.

The deterioration of conditions of service over the past five years, as
well as the decline in infrastructure and the quality of service delivery
in health and education have resulted in an exodus of teachers and health
workers leaving the service to go overseas.

In addition, the accelerating class polarisation, particularly within
the black population with newly-enriched black millionaires who flaunt
their wealth ostentatiously and now make up a significant component of
millionaires (who now number over 700 compared to 100 in 1994), inflamed
the sense of alienation and exploitation felt by the masses.

Electricity and water cuts, evictions for non-payment for rent and
rates, containment of wage increases and retrenchments have continued to
provoke the masses. Since the ANC’s election landslide in April 2004 there
has been public outrage over corruption and an attempted cover-up scandal.

As the ANC celebrated 10 years of democracy and its 70% landslide,
there was an outbreak of student protests against cuts in financial aid
across the country starting at the prestigious University of the
Witwatersrand. The DSM-linked Socialist Student Movement called mass
meetings at ‘Wits’ and on 9 September, organised a 500-strong day of
action for free education in Durban.

A week before, police opened fire with bird-shot on high school
students protesting against poor services in the Free State, killing a
17-year-old. There have been outbreaks of protests on housing in Protea
Glen in Soweto and Diepsloot just outside Johannesburg. A youth protecting
his mother from being manhandled by police there to protect officials
coming to cut their electricity was shot dead by police.

In the mid-year season of wage negotiations thousands of workers in the
private sector have been on strike or merely threatened strike action to
secure wage increases higher than that offered to public sector workers.

Union leaders

AS THE negotiations deadlocked and Sadtu declared for a strike, the
other education union, Nehawu, (National Education Health and Allied
Workers Union) sent out a circular to the provincial structures calling
for a mandate to settle as, given that only two provinces had a mandate
for strike action, "there was no prospect of a strike now or in the
immediate future".

An infuriated rank-and-file in a number of provinces participated in
the 2 September Sadtu marches with no guidance or support from head
office. A DSM comrade on the Pretoria region executive sent a letter to
head office denouncing the circular as a betrayal and a sell-out. He
accused the Nehawu leadership of turning the membership into
strike-breakers and an agent of the African National Congress (ANC)
government.

So shaken was the leadership that the public spokesperson actually
wrote back. While defending the national office bearers’ right to express
their view, he actually said he disagreed with their position and believed
the union should strike. Within five days of the first circular, the
officers sent out a second circular claiming that their position had been
misinterpreted as being against a strike! Astonishingly the circular
repeated the same position while acknowledging that if the membership
wished to strike then that would be the position of the union.

At the special national executive committee called on the eve of the
strike, the officials’ miserable protestations were swept aside by the
overwhelming vote for strike action in every single one of the nine
provinces.

Workers’ party

AN IMPORTANT feature of this strike is the political conclusions
workers are drawing.

President Thabo Mbeki had denounced the strike, but in a way that will
make the ridiculous political position of the Cosatu leadership, (ie that
this was not a strike against the ANC but against the government as
employer), impossible to sustain.

He pointed out that the very same Cosatu leaders who had campaigned for
an ANC vote were now leading strikes against it. It will no longer be
possible for the leadership to pretend that the ANC suffers from dual
personality disorder – that the ANC as a political party and the ANC as
government are two different political persona. Both in Pretoria and Cape
Town the slogan "viva ANC" was conspicuous by its absence. ANC
flags were nowhere in sight.

Rank-and-file workers are beginning to witness with their own eyes what
the DSM has been warning about for some time – that whilst the Tripartite
Alliance (between the ANC, Cosatu and the South African Communist Party)
was being promoted and maintained in the name of unity, it has become a
source of disunity. The outline of the consciousness necessary for the
re-assertion of the class independence of the working class through the
break-up of the Tripartite Alliance is beginning to take shape. The
situation is pregnant with the possibility of a mass workers’ party,
albeit in the first month.

The survey carried out by Cosatu’s research arm, into whether workers
would support the establishment of a mass workers party to stand in the
elections, found 33% in favour in September 2003 – just over six months
before the last general election. No doubt, today, hardly six months
after, with the lessons of the public-sector battle burned into workers’
consciousness, that figure would be significantly higher.

The workers may not win this dispute, although there is no reason for
them not to, provided the leadership was prepared to fight. But the
leadership is itself fearful of the political implications of escalating
the action. It would tear away at the credibility of the Tripartite
Alliance with whose maintenance many of their careers in the corporate
world and senior government posts are tied up.

A concession is not ruled out however, as sections of the ANC
leadership may regard the collapse of the Tripartite Alliance as
undesirable and premature despite the ANC’s 70% majority in the last
elections.

However, even if the workers are defeated, they will have lost after a
fight. They will have learned profoundly important lessons from this
strike. The class polarisation and the political differentiation that is
following will continue.